The Road Less Traveled
by swimmingcop
Summary: When the zeds were cleaned up during the initial outbreak in London, the world had hoped that it would be a definitive end to the madness that had been contained by a thread. Instead, Horzine Biotech rose to new heights in ways no one could have imagined. If only the New World would not be the ones to suffer the consequences.


_A/N: Ho boy._

 _Remember how in my first serious fic, 'Infinity' I wrote that I had full intentions of writing a few really good stories that I vowed to finish no matter what purely to provide closure so they didn't sit on the internet if they ever ended up being really good and died on a cliffhanger?_

 _Yeah, man have I gone full circle on that. Now I've got three fics I'm working on updating at a snail's pace due to being in my last year of high school and having a ton of things to do. I shouldn't even be here. I should be doing my stats homework._

 _Whatever. You aren't here to hear me complain and I know that. This story is going to be short, I expect to have it ended in under 100,000 words. This is supposed to be like, a sidequest for the Courier in the world of Fallout + other universes. My other stories will likely exceed that word count, the Fateless certainly will._

 _For those wondering: Infinity is pretty much dead, with a chance of me rewriting the entire story in the not near future but regular future. It will still include much of the things that made it good and now that my writing skills have improved somewhat I'm gonna try and cut out the things that made it the work of an amateur._

 _MILDLY IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER ABOUT THIS STORY: This story features the SAME Courier from my Fallout x Percy Jackson series, but in an AU where she completed the Mr. House main quest instead of independent. Apart from that, nothing really changes. This story is going to be humorous, very dark, and somewhat serious at varying points. You have been warned._

 _Now story time. Let's do this. I fucking love writing. But only when I'm motivated, and right now my keyboard is being fueled by pure testosterone and a drive for typing. Here we go._

* * *

 _Somewhere in the Mojave, 2283_

"Is that the last one?"

"Lemme check, I don't think so," Arianna mumbled, her speech muddled by the flashlight she held in her teeth as she rummaged through her pack. Finding what she was looking for at last, she handed a flare to Holmes, and he lit it immediately.

A dull red glow was cast over the narrow corridor, red and white sparks leaping off the flare that, to be honest, Arianna was surprised still worked. They hadn't been in the best condition when she found them in a half-soaked crate in Vault 34, but once again the Old World proved that whatever they used to preserve fragile goods could literally survive an apocalypse.

The intrepid pair of prospectors advanced slowly, weapons half raised as they crept along the hall. They may have been experienced, but so many hours of walking through empty corridors without hide nor tail of excitement had dulled their senses to the point of a somewhat cautious stroll.

"I want to say that we'll get really rich from this one, especially since it definitely doesn't look like anyone's been here," Holmes said suddenly, the man's sudden speech startling Arianna who jumped slightly before relaxing. He arched an eyebrow while she glared then continued.

"But I'm starting to think less and less of that. This looks like a science lab more than anything, and it's not like we can drag all the really expensive equipment away. You want to head back?" he asked as they stopped in front of another door.

Arianna sighed, running a hand through her messy, sweat-entangled hair. "Yeah. Yeah I do want to head back, but I also want to get paid, and we can at least break even if we snag some of the things in here."

Holmes crossed his arms at her and leaned against the wall, the man's considerable height forcing him to hunch his head forward slightly when it brushed against the ceiling. "And how do you plan on 'breaking even' on all the supplies we lost getting here, exactly?"

Arianna smirked. Holmes was fast and strong and not the worst in bed, but he was lacking in the common sense department a bit too much for his own good. "I don't know if you'll recall, but the eggheads up at New Vegas labs put up a sign saying they'd pay for salvage."

"Whoop dee-fucking doo."

"But unlike other generic salvage notices," she continued, as she grinned smugly, "they're paying specifically for scientific tools. Microscopes, chemistry centrifuges, shit like that. Also unlike other salvage jobs, they're paying a lot more than anyone else." That got his attention.

"Okay," he said neutrally. "I can see what you're saying, but where exactly are we going to get those? All the ones in the previous rooms are broken and shit."

In response, she grabbed his flare-wielding hand and forced it upwards—lighting up the sign directly above the door they were in front of.

FORENSICS AND C

Her prospecting partner formed a small "o" with his mouth. "Oh. Hey what's the rest say?"

"Hell if I know," she answered, looking all over the door for a way to open it. "But can you give me a hand with this?"

He snorted. "You know Arianna, for someone who acts so smart you can be pretty fuckin' stupid at times," the man said as his fist thumped against the obvious green button on the wall, which instantly opened the door.

"I-" she stopped, momentarily stunned before gathering herself. "Yeah screw you too. Now come on, let's nab whatever looks science-y and then get out."

"No argument there."

This room was certainly different from the rest though. It looked really well preserved to begin with. Everything leading up to the door had been wrecked and in varying states of disrepair, but in here as he swept his dying flare across the room, everything seemed pretty okay. Sure enough, the forensics lab was covered with tables, each one bearing everything from microscopes to precision weight scales.

In other words, it looked exactly like what one would expect a Pre-War forensics lab to look like.

"So-" he said, somewhat bored before the room came alive in a sudden display of bright white light. He gave a shout and stumbled backwards, his assault carbine raised in alarm before he managed to blink away the panic and the light, and saw Arianna standing next to a light switch.

"Don't-" he warned, but it was too late. She slumped against the wall and slid down it with her hand over her mouth, shivering with barely-contained laughter. He sighed.

"Pffffftttttt hahahahahahaha!" she released at last, struggling to her feet. "Fukkin' christ, Holmes, you looked like-"

"Yeah, awesome," he cut off as the less mature woman struggled to regain her composure. "I'm just going to bag all the things you wanted, since you're too _occupied_ to do anything about it."

"You do that," she giggled out, steadying herself as she wandered around the room. He glared only for a short while before resigning himself to his assignment, and unzipped the massive backpack he carried with him wherever he went.

"Why are all the lights outside broken but the ones in here are just fucking dandy," he muttered to himself as he set to work.

Being a prospector wasn't easy.

After House had established himself as the premier power in the region, NCR had mostly withdrawn from the area. This left much of the south, north, and west vulnerable to attacks, but the securitrons and various private security companies were keeping the peace. As a result, the entire area was off limits to anyone who didn't want to get shot.

Which meant the only way for a prospector to make a profit was to head east, across the river. Where even the Legion remnants didn't dare to tread after the brutal ass-kicking the Courier had given them at Hoover Dam.

It was still a decent living, if Holmes was being honest with himself as he took care to pack a pair of electron microscopes carefully so they wouldn't break against each other in his pack. The commute to the nearest merchant and settlement was ridiculous, but the payoff was somewhat bigger so it kind of balanced out.

Unfortunately, as the days went on it just meant he had to keep travelling further and further to find places to scavenge from that other prospectors hadn't already reached, which lead him to this bunker in a cave he'd found by chance across the Colorado River

He picked up another microscope and flicked the power switch, checking to see if the light came on. Satisfied that it did, he moved to put it into his knapsack before he looked at the label. He brushed some dust away, and squinted to see the tiny print.

PROPERTY OF HORZINE™

Never heard of them. He put it into his bag and grabbed a rack of vials, careful not to shatter them.

Still, in spite of the general improvement in his and everyone else's quality of life in the Mojave, he hadn't been a fan of change, and a part of him wished for the uneasy peace between NCR and the Legion. Back when the whole region was up for grabs. It was a simpler time.

"Yo, what the hell is this?"

It was also before he met her, which was good and bad for multiple reasons, he mused as he headed over to the woman in question at the opposite end of the lab. "What is it?" he asked, then he saw.

They both stood shoulder to shoulder for a while, just staring before Arianna broke the silence. "No seriously, what the fuck."

In front of them and propped up against the wall was a human skeleton. Judging by the fact that its skull was caved in at basically every single place and its bones were bent inwards, the man hadn't died a painless death. Brown stains that were from very old blood marked the entire area around him, looking like he'd practically exploded like a balloon on death.

"Ouch," Holmes shrugged, and got ready to move back before Arianna's hand grabbed his.

"How did he die? No one but us even discovered this ass-backwards bunker."

"Yeah and you should give a shit," he muttered, continuing on. "Dude probably got killed by the rest of the scientists working here after they went insane from having to lock themselves in a lab after the bombs fell 'cause of the radiation. You think we have enough of these to sell?"

"What?" she asked, and the normally wasteland-hardened woman looked a lot more fragile to him when she turned to face him. She looked shaken, which was weird. Arianna had seen a ton of corpses prior to today. Why was this one unnerving her?

Whatever the case, Holmes wasn't a total fuckup when it came to women. "Hey, come on, it's okay," he said softly, pulling her close even as she mutely allowed him to take her in his arms. They stood like that for a moment, and the moment became long enough that Holmes began to wonder if it was becoming awkward. Before it did though, Arianna gave a subtle push off of him, and he let go of the woman, letting her bring a hand to her head and breathe, trying to clear her mind.

"You good?" he asked her after some time had passed. She didn't respond at first, and when he moved to see if she was alright she responded.

"Hell yeah I'm good, I'm Arianna. I'm _awesome_ ," she grinned at him, grabbing his other bags and adding it to her backpack even as she almost buckled under the weight. Holmes rolled his eyes when he realized his friend was back.

"You're a child is what you are," he muttered.

"What was that?"

"I said it's time to go," he replied sarcastically. She huffed but pulled the backpack over her leather armor. "Yeah, well you're right about that at least."

Holmes stopped. "Hey Arianna?"

She looked at him and cocked her head. "What's up?"

"Did you close the door?"

"No, why?"

He pointed. There was the way they'd come in alright, but now the same steel door from earlier was blocking the entrance, and unlike before there was no large green button to open it. Only a small red one and a keyhole directly above it.

"Oh no," Arianna groaned before she went up to the door, furiously jabbing at the button, only to hear a ringing noise each time she pressed it."

The door didn't budge.

"Motherfuck!" she shouted, kicking at it. "I think we're trapped in this place?"

"What's that behind you?" Holmes asked, and she turned, widening her eyes slightly. Above the keyhole was a small screen—how had she missed that? And on that screen some small white text was scrolling past it.

-ERROR LOCKDOWN LVL 0 IN PROGRESS

-ALL DOORS LOCKED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

-PLEASE SIGNAL ALL CLEAR TO LIFT LOCKDOWN STATUS

"Well how in the shit are we supposed to do that?" Arianna asked before an idea struck her and she looked around the room.

"What's up?" Holmes asked her as he started after her, keeping up with her swift pace.

"They wouldn't lock all the doors and shit without any way to signal the room you're in is safe, right?" she muttered to herself and him as she walked quickly next to the walls. "There has to be a lever or something in here we can trigger to show these doors can be unlocked right?"

"Uh, I mean, I guess?" Holmes asked, managing to keep up with her haphazard thoughts as she kept sweeping the room for a way out.

"Well then if you understand then don't just stand there, look for the release!" she snapped, abandoning the left wall and moving on to the next one. "I don't wanna know how much air is left in this room and how much time we got left."

"Pretty sure if the lights still work the vents probably do too," he said, but even he could see the logic in hurrying the hell up. Eyes searched the stark white room for anything resembling what she had described.

He found it after only a minute, a boxy thing covered in dust with wires coming out of it that ran into the ceiling. He blew it away and gave a few hacking coughs as some of the dust got into his lungs, but at least it revealed the device. It was unlabeled, but it was as good as they were going to get, and there was a very obvious slot for where his hand should go to pull down the lever built into it.

Without hesitation, he reached it and triggered it.

Arianna gave a startled yelp as the previously blindingly white light gave way to dull red emergency lighting from only a few bulbs on the ceiling. "What did you do?" she asked him, to which he shrugged.

"I found a lever and pulled it, like you told me to."

"Oh." She shuffled her feet as their eyes adjusted back to low-light conditions. "Just... give a give some warning next time. Is the door still locked or..?"

To answer that question, one side of the room was suddenly lit up with a wall of crimson light. Quick as a whip, it swept across the entire room, and went over them, eliciting a cry of alarm from the prospectors and beeping from the ceiling.

Suddenly some white mist was being sprayed from black nozzles mounted on the ceiling, covering every crevice in the room. It soaked into their clothes, and Holmes coughed as he tasted disinfectant.

And then the door's light turned yellow.

"What?!" Holmes yelled, marching his way over to the door. "What kind of brahminshit is this?!"

"Oh god dammit, what does the monitor say?"

-WARNING CONTAMINANTS DETECTED BEYOND THIS POINT

-WARNING CONTAINMENT FAILURE DETECTED

-MANUAL OVERRIDE REQUIRED

To him, it seemed a logical choice. "Arianna?" he asked.

"Override the fuckin' thing."

He palmed the button, and it flashed green once as the door slid apart.

"Thank you god," he murmured as he charged through, into the now lit-up hallways of outside the lab. That was a little odd, that the lights out here were apparently controlled from inside a lab but he didn't care. They were out of that hellhole.

Arianna apparently thought the same thing as she leapt into the air triumphantly. "Fuck yeah! Put that in your pipe and smoke it ya fuckin' quarantine! Wooo!"

Her partner chuckled, just glad he hadn't ended up dying in an underground room. "Come on, let's get the hell out of here," he said, bringing his eyes up to the other end of the hall-

"What the fuck?"

Directly across from them was... what even _was_ that thing? In the brightly lit corridors, everything looked white but this thing was pale as could be. It looked like a tall but hunched over human, with dried blood all around its eyes and mouth, and shaking elongated claw-like hands.

"Uh, is that a ghoul?" Arianna asked suddenly, drawing her 10mm submachinegun. Holmes shook his head, aiming his rifle at the thing's head.

"Don't look like any ghoul I've ever seen," he answered. It growled at them for a few moments, eyes flickering between each of them before it hobbled forward, taking its steps gingerly, like it was a newborn.

"Hey!" Arianna yelled, digging her heels into the ground as she aimed her weapon. "Stand back or we'll shoot!"

It didn't listen, just kept shambling forward.

"Waste him," she said, and Holmes complied.

The shot was deafeningly loud in the confined corridors, but the duo barely flinched as the 5.56mm round tore straight through the thing's head, pulping it into a bloody stump and sending the creature falling to the ground.

Smoke wafted off Holmes' assault carbine as they looked at the now deceased creature, wondering what had just happened. "I-" Arianna began, only to cover her ears in pain.

 _"KREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"_

She cried out, but Holmes didn't hear anything when she did. In fact, all he could hear was ringing. He fell to the ground, carbine clattering away uselessly as he clawed at his ears painfully.

Emerging from the room they had found themselves locked in just moments before, was what could only be described as an emaciated woman in a straightjacket. Most hauntingly of all were her eyes, or lack thereof. Instead, only two bloody eyesockets greeted him, as if staring into his soul.

But Holmes hadn't survived this long by being a terrible combatant. And while most of prospecting was about haggling and knowing where to scavenge, he had learned plenty of combat tricks from his time in the NCR before deserting.

It took a lot of conviction, but he ripped his pistol free from its holster, flipped off the safety, and fired several shots straight into its chest with a shaking hand.

It shrugged them off somehow, the bullets only creating dark red splotches on its chest as it screamed again.

This time, Holmes was prepared, if only slightly. He covered his ears instinctively but that only served to make his eardrums pop, almost certainly permanently deafening him. Blood trickled freely from them, but he was ready to retaliate.

In a moment, the man had drawn his combat knife, and in one swift stab lodged it firmly into the woman's neck.

It gurgled and hissed, but no sound came out. He picked up his 9mm, and after one quick reload, emptied the entire magazine into its head.

That was enough, at long last. It went limp in his arms as he realized he'd been forcing it in place with one hand while he shot it. The thing slumped to the ground, dead when he let go, and he withdrew a stimpak from his satchel and jammed it into his neck, sighing in relief as the regenerative medicine set about repairing his ears.

The ringing still persisted, but that was negligible at this point. He knelt down to help Arianna, before he became acutely aware of a growling noise directly in front of him.

Staring with hungry eyes straight at him was a lot more of the same creature he had killed before, and many more he didn't recognize.

And as one, they all charged towards him.

Holmes grabbed his rifle. One, two, three, four, five of the things fell to his deadly accurate bursts of rifle fire.

The sixth knocked it out of his hands and onto the ground.

They ripped him apart. He died screaming.

* * *

 _The Lucky 38 Casino, One week later_

The elevators closed with a pleasant *ding*, and the Courier took the opportunity to stretch her limbs one last time before she put on her armor. She rolled her arms and yawned, then tapped a few buttons on her wrist mounted Pip-Boy 3000.

Just like that, the armor she had hotkeyed into the system activated, and in a flash of white and pale green light she was suddenly covered in armor. Green ballistic plating that could have shrugged off anything short of a rocket launcher and then some was layered over her vital organs, and a composite weave that most bullets would only bounce off of wrapped itself around her.

Elite riot armor. Possibly the only good thing she had ever gotten out of the Divide, sans ED-E's upgrades.

Six let out another yawn as she debated whether or not to put on her helmet, before deciding it didn't matter as she scratched at her face and tried to pat her hair down. What the hell could House have wanted from her _this_ early in the morning?

Ever since her victory at Hoover Dam, her and House had swiftly taken control of almost the entire Mojave region by storm. The Securitrons numbered almost a _thousand_ after the foundries of Big Mountain had been turned over to House's control. Now it was only a matter of time until a fresh batch of upgraded MK III Securitrons arrived at the Mojave to uphold the law. In the meantime, it was up to the mercenaries she had paid off with exorbitant amounts of money working in tandem with the comparatively more spread out force of police robots to keep the peace.

And whenever a threat arose that they couldn't deal with without heavy casualties or required diplomacy, as was usually the case with NCR, she was sent in.

Which was why the fact that House was depriving her of securing their nation irked her. Although, she admitted to herself as she materialized a bottle of Sunset Sasparilla and sipped at the cream soda, it was mostly the impromptu summons that caught her off guard.

The elevator continued its electronic hum as it ascended, and she idly wondered what the meeting was about. After all, House had never sounded nervous when he called for her before.

Six took another swig of her soda. Whatever the case, it would be interesting, which was better than fighting amateur mercenaries hired by NCR to harass New Vegas caravans. Maybe there would even be some fighting, but who knew.

Today was a brand new day.

* * *

 _A/N: Yeah so again, sorry about starting more fics which have a dubious fate as to whether or not I'll finish them. This story is going to be on the same order of importance for me as These Vagabond Shoes. In that I'll update it, but it'll be an infrequent updating schedule._

 _Anyways I hope ya'll liked the story and you didn't feel like the intro dragged on for too long. Please review because nothing turns me on me than seeing new reviews, and I'm really bored. Thank you all for giving this story a chance, you all have a great rest of your day._


End file.
